ity,
there was neither time nor the mental aptitude. A little later he had
given his card to the servant at the door and was waiting in a darkened
and most depressive library for the coming of the master of the house.
The five minutes of waiting nearly finished him. As the absurdly formal
clock between the book-cases ticked off the leaden-winged seconds, his
plan for the rescue of Pacific Southwestern took the form of a crass
impertinence, and only the grim determination to see a lost cause
decently coffined and buried kept the enthusiast with his face to the
front.

After all, the beginning of the interview with the tall, thin,
gray-haired and hatchet-faced old man, who presently stalked into the
library and gave his hand with carefully adjusted cordiality to the son
of one of his college classmates, was only a little more depressing: it
was not mortal. Ford had been born in Illinois; and so, something better
than a third of a century earlier, had the president. Moreover, Mr.
Colbrith had, in the hey-day of his youth, shared rooms with the elder
Ford in the fresh-water university which had later numbered the younger
Ford among its alumni. These things count for somewhat, even when the
gap to be bridged is that between the president of a railroad and one of
his minor officials.

But when the revolutionary project was introduced, the president's
guarded cordiality faded like a photographic proof-print in the
sunlight, and the air of the darkened library grew coldly inclement.

"So you came to talk business, did you?" said the high, rasping voice
out of the depths of the easy-chair opposite; and Ford raged inwardly at
the thought that he had clearly placed himself at a disadvantage by
becoming even constructively the guest of the president. "As a rule, I
positively refuse to discuss such matters outside of their proper
environment; but I'll make an exception for Douglas Ford's son. Your
plan is simply impossible. I can understand how it may appear possible,
and even attractive, to a young man, and especially to the young man who
has invented it. But as an investment for capital--my dear young sir, go
back to your division, and strive by faithful service to rise in the
accepted and time-honored way. You are wasting your time in New York."

Curiously enough, Ford found his evaporated courage recrystallizing
under opposition.

"I can not believe that I have made the plan, and the present condition
of the system, suffic